She’s Here!
What I loved about this spring day (yes, she’s here, spring is finally here):
Putting bed linen out on the line to dry for the first time since, er, October, and leaving the sun and wind do their work.
Making lemon cupcakes with two twelve-year-olds and realising that it doesn’t matter if the icing isn’t perfectly smooth, or that the sponge didn’t rise as much as it ought to have done. Together, butter, sugar and flour will taste good no matter what you do to them.
This year’s first tulips.
At the end of the day, a man leaning out of a top floor window and having a fag.
Hearing a delivery man wish a customer well with her pregnancy.
The deep-plum leaves of a prunus against a sage-green wall.
To the west, the sun setting over a hundred chimney tops, which made me think of this:
Self-raising Flowers
Years ago I had a temporary administration job in a university department in central London. The job served its purpose, had its ups and downs and involved a fair bit of filing, a task that allowed one to disappear to a small, windowless room for days on end, certain in the knowledge that one would be left undisturbed for the duration.
I didn’t care much for the filing, the subject codes or whether the students had passed or failed. What distracted me in that tiny room was the personal data contained in those files: places and dates of birth, copies of visa and asylum applications, names of children and spouses – and the names of the students themselves. As the course attracted a large West African contingent, the students’ names were not the mild Sarahs, Janes and Katies I’d been exposed to until then but marvellous things like Promise, Charity, Hyacinth and, my favourite, Dahlia.
That particular name, Dahlia, popped into my head early one morning last week as I photographed a garden given over almost in entirety to the flowers. It’s a life’s work for the owner, who, after 39 years in the same beloved place, is moving on to somewhere smaller in the next month or so.
“That garden’s a bloody mess,” a local landscape designer said when I mentioned it. “My hands itch when I go there.”
She’s right – it is a terrible, overgrown mess but therein lies its most wonderful charm. In that quiet garden I was entranced by the infinite variations of colour and form in this most regal of summer flowers. So, they’re greedy feeders and they’re a bit rampant if left unchecked, but if you’re going to name your child after a flower, I can think of few better options than Dahlia.
I’m to go back to the garden for a reshoot but, Sod’s law, the weather’s turned and it’s raining.
The Ultimate Seed Collection
If you’ve visited www.ted.com before , you’ll know it’s a fascinating repository of talks by some of the world’s leading thinkers.
Today I discovered a talk by Jonathan Drori about the Millenium Seed Bank. When you have a moment take a listen and learn why three billion seeds from around the world have been gathered for safekeeping. Then click on the next talk and the next and the next and the next and before you know it, it will be time for supper.
You can find out more on the MSB, which is attached to Kew, here.
A Dying Breed
My first introduction to ‘Cox’s Orange Pippin’ was through Roald Dahl’s Danny the Champion of World. It was the wonderful roll of the name that struck me, aged seven or eight, for it seemed nothing like the anonymous cooking apples that grew in the garden (pictured) or the usual South African supermarket fare, which offered a choice of ‘Granny Smith’, ‘Golden Delicious’ and ‘red ones’.
I’m sure, however, that ‘Cox’s Orange Pippin’ is to be found in Britain’s National Fruit Collections on Brogdale Farm, Kent. Over 2 000 varieties of apple are grown there, yet Kent’s orchards have been reduced by over 85 per cent in the past 50 years, as Lara Barton explains in this poignant video clip in today’s Guardian online.
How many varieties of apple does one find in British supermarkets today? The variety is greater than that of my southern childhood, but I can think of only five or six, at most.
I expect the fall in number is a matter of commercial expedience combined with consumer demand, yet there is something to be said for a good apple with crunch and taste. It’s one of life’s finer things.
Last weekend I made a fruit tart – I say fruit, rather than apple, since I’d insufficient ‘Bramley’ apples and so topped up the filling with pears. The scent of a buttery case crisping in the oven and of the fruit collapsing in a mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg and honey while the kitchen windows steamed up against the cold outside was delightful. With all the ghouls and beasties on loose, it was a reassuring way to pass Halloween.
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